Gold Rush coins for sale for $2.75M

If you'd like a piece of the "greatest buried treasure" ever found in U.S. history, it can be yours for $2.75 million, plus free shipping.

Fourteen gold coins considered the best of the best of the 1,400 rare, mint-condition gold coins found by a Northern California couple while walking their dog went on sale on Amazon at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

The lot of coins, dubbed the Saddle Ridge Hoard, date from 1866 to 1894. They include a 1866-S Double Eagle $20 coin without the "In God We Trust" motto valued at $1.2 million. The coins are being sold along with one of the original cans that they were buried in.

The first of the coins went on sale Tuesday night. Amazon has sold about 400 of the 1,000 coins since the sale started, says David McCarthy, the senior numismatist at Kagin's Inc., the company handling the sale. The coins are selling for $2,500 to $10,000.

Kagin's is selling another 400, which range in price from $10,000 to about $250,000. McCarthy says they have about 70 coins left.

"We are looking at a likely sellout," he says. Though he says, with such a hefty price tag, the 14-coin lot may take a while to sell.

The $2.75 million cache of coins is the second highest price for coins on Amazon. The company has a 1907 $20 gold coin designed by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens that is for sale for $3.75 million.

They are part of the collectibles coin store that the company launched Tuesday, coinciding with the sale of the Saddle Ridge coins.

"We've been pleased by the results," says Steve Johnson, director for the Amazon Marketplace. "We are getting lots of attention."

However, he wouldn't say how many of the Saddle Ridge coins had sold so far. "We have not sold out yet, but there is the possibility with the demand we are seeing," he says.

The coins, in denominations of $5, 10 and $20, are worth almost $28,000 in face value. But they are so rare and in such good condition that the entire collection is expected to fetch at least $10 million.

The couple's identity has not been revealed. The pair were walking their dog on their property when they noticed a canister jutting out of the ground. The property had a colorful history stretching back to the earliest days of the gold rush, so the couple often found tools and other items buried around the land, according to Kagin's website.

Using a stick, they pulled out the can. It was sealed and very heavy and it wasn't until the lid cracked off that they saw the edge of a gold coin. In total, they found eight cans buried near a tree. The coins dated from 1847 to 1890.

"Little did they know that they had made the greatest find of buried treasure in U.S. history," Kagin says on its website.